nogsland

I am really not a summer person, not only do I hate the heat, but I hate the snakes, the flies, the total lethargy that sweeps over me whenever I go outside and the brownness that sweeps over the land as we all hold our breath and pray that no bushfires come our way for two to three months.

We have been told that a heatwave is heading our way, it is already predicted to be 46 (nearly 130 for those in the UK) in some parts of New South Wales by Wednesday, for us probably high 30's, but t...

It has been a while. Our IT people tell us it is fixed but I have my doubts.

Well, we just had a record breaking weekend on the farm, not Guinness Records type records but certainly a record for us. This weekend was sadly the last for one of our two young boars. Capey, imaginatively named because his white stripe is not quite a stripe, rather a dapper looking cape, lives to fight another day. He has a beautiful temperament and is very tactile, Chris has decided he is going to try and teach him to sit…..Anyway, we have decided to keep him as Diggary’s repla...

Well, yesterday was the first day of Spring (1 September for those of you in a different hemisphere), today it rained all day and one might be forgiven for thinking that Mother Nature has got it a bit wrong. I was in Brisbane for work yesterday and the weather was glorious, less so when I got on a plane in the evening and came back to wintery Canberra. They are predicting wild weather over the next 24 hours so we are battening down the hatches.

It's all been happening at the farm since ...

Well it has all been happening here, with snowstorns and rain storms and wind storms coming at us from all directions. The sheep decided that this meant it was a perfect time to start lambing. Worrying in itself given we are now in the grips of winter but also strange as it is 2 months earlier than when they normally give birth. I am not going to even start on a climate change argument. Suffice to say, it would be much better if they were being born when it was warm, as now we have to fret ab...

Well winter has well and truly arrived. This weekend it rained, and it rained. I stopped looking outside when the rain gauge topped 100mm, the dam overflowed and the Geese swam by in an area where you wouldn’t normally expect to see Geese swimming. The only upside was that it was not hideously windy as well, however, with no sun all week, we were looking a bit ropey from a power perspective. We were running out of diesel for the generator and looking at things to turn off when it b...

Well Chris now has the bandage and dressing off his leg, is demonstrating a very impressive scab and newly formed scar and is very happy that he can now shower on two legs without cling film. Still not full mobility, but much better and no more trips to the surgeon.

A healthy Chris means work has begun apace on the house once more, well as quickly as one person can do all of the time consuming jobs that need to be done.  Chris is spending a few days a week doing the final outside c...

Well I think Chris will say that he has had better months when he has cause to reflect on the last 4 odd weeks. This week is his last visit of his now weekly visits to the surgeon where they poke his leg, clean it and burn dead bits of skin off it. He meanwhile is going through boxes of cling film (in which he has to wrap his leg every day when he wants to shower) and has to keep remembering that he can't bend his leg still as much as he would like.

This week represented a bre...

Timing was never our strong point, so after an eventful few weeks with the pigs, we were not really ready for the home kill butcher to come and dispatch Simon the Steer.  Chris was originally going to do some sheep himself, but being out of sheep in the freezer and him being temporarily handicapped, we decided to get the butcher to do some for us.

The big debate for some weeks has been who should be for the chop. We have become very fond of Simon over the last year or so, so it was...

We forgot one simple rule the other day and now we are both living with the consequences.  We had two people driving separately for a number of hours to pick up boar piglets for breeding.  Chris had built a new run so that it was easier to catch them. And so it was. Unfortunately we had omitted to keep in mind that what keeps a mother and piglets in, also prevents you from having an easy escape route if you need one.

When Matthew arrived after a long drive to pick up the first...